May 2018 Spending Report
Omigoodness guys! May and June have been so full of activities in our family, and the spending report will really show that. May was a month of "life happening." Most sadly my Grandpa John Jensen (nice to meet ya) passed at the age of 95. We had family come into town for the funeral and had a lot of good family time celebrating his life and legacy. We went to Moab & Arches National Park for a camping trip with my sister's family; we were actually down in Moab when we got the news of my Grandpa. We had homeschool Lagoon day (a local amusement park) and the wrapping up of our school year. Busy busy and June hasn't slowed down, which is why I'm just getting this post together!
Tithing
We paid $610 to tithing. We just this year started paying our tithing based on our gross paychecks rather than net.
Mortgage
$883.83. Our mortgage is just the house payment. We had PMI removed last year and we manage our own escrow rather than the mortgage company. I highly recommend doing both these things!
Utilities
Water Bill $72.30. Comcast $81.02. June's will be smaller as we've made some changes on our services with Comcast. Natural Gas $37.25. Yay!! Warm weather makes the gas bill go down! Phone $97.86.
Sinking Funds
We have sinking funds for our property taxes ($140), insurance ($1,367.95), car registrations ($24), and life insurance premiums($42.68). This month is super high because we switched insurance providers. Our new provider gives a discount for paying in full for the year. Because of how our old insurance provider billed we didn't have sinking funds to pull from, so we had to come up with the cash to pay it, get the discount, and will now start an ongoing sinking fund for Auto and Home insurance.
Food
The food category includes Ben's breakfasts at work, restaurants, and groceries. I define groceries as food, paper products, diapers & wipes, beauty and personal care.
Ben's breakfasts cost $17.02. I was hit-and-miss, more miss, on making food for Ben at home to keep that number down. I usually make biscuits, eggs, sausage or bacon for him so he doesn't have to go down to the cafeteria.
Restaurants $106.67. This was again a higher month for restaurant eating but that was because we had our trip down to Moab and ate on the road and we had family in town for my grandpa's funeral so there were some restaurant visits that came with that.
Groceries $820.71 Yikes. I thought April was out of control but May has taken the record for largest grocery spending bill so far this year. A hundred of this was actually food for a church activity that I was reimbursed for so maybe I should take that off but still $700 on food for our family is really high! What I noticed in reviewing our spending was a lot of visits to Costco. That place is dangerous. An impulse buy will be at least $10 there if not more!
Kid's Activities
We only do extracurriculars in the summer. We are lucky to have a community center that offers 8 week classes for kids for only $10 per class! We spent $40 registering the girls for dance, cheer, theater, and tumbling.
Clothing
$239.97. When my sisters and mom were in town for Grandpa's funeral we hit the outlets for some discount shopping. I got some good deals but spent some money!
Gifts
$64.90. Mother's day, a graduation, and a couple of birthday parties.
Entertainment
$140.81. We went to Lagoon, a local amusement park, for Homeschool Day. These were discounted student tickets and we were able to "bounceback" in June for an even greater discount.
Home Projects
$237.22. We are finishing up a new dining table and I needed some materials to finish a wall art project that you'll get to see soon!
Debt
$283.74. This was just minimum payments. We had to funnel all extra funds toward the insurance premiums. This was a bummer because I had calculated when we'd be done and this pushes it back another month or two.
Miscellaneous
$276.02. This included allowance, some chicken supplies at the farm store, some of the campground costs, library late fees (woops!), and who knows what from Walmart so I stuck it in here!
